Hear New Delhi Producer Goya’s Hypnotic New Track ‘Dor’

When the pandemic kicked in early last year, New Delhi producer and sound engineer Goya aka Abhishek Sekhri found himself in the midst of “recovering from the breakup of a long-distance relationship.” It led to the creation of an immersive, club-friendly new track “Dor.”

Taking its name from the Romanian expression meaning “longing for someone or something,” Sekhri created the track while he was jamming on his Moog Mother 32 semi-modular synthesizer. While there’s plenty of trippy phasing that goes on, the producer also infuses ambient elements like birds crying, waves of water and more. He says about completing the track, “As I came close to finishing it, I could relate it to the feeling of the energy between two people. How being with someone makes you learn about yourself a little more, and the process of acceptance that follows. It was a time when I was in a long-distance relationship with someone and I think I got to express how I was feeling through this track; How it felt to be devoid of human touch for a long time and at the same time, the recognition of my own sexual identity and finding peace in things that are unusual yet they are a part of who you are.”

Although it wasn’t a conscious decision to produce an eight-minute track, Sekhri divided “Dor” into three phases. “All of them have a slightly different groove-feel,” he says. Throughout the song, an obscured but spectral vocal hook is supplied by Tyesha Kohli, but Sekhri tells us that she wasn’t really involved in the making of “Dor.” He adds, “The vocal samples have been created by reversing and manipulating the vocals of ‘Our Own Roof‘ (a previous collaborative track with Tyesha). I was experimenting with them and I found out that by reversing the vocals in ‘Our Own Roof,’ it almost gave way to a new language and they fit really well with the sound of ‘Dor’ so I ended up using them.”

While “Dor” follows Goya’s 2020 debut EP Morii, Sekhri has been writing more music in the last three months. He says, “Some I intend to use for collaboration with other artists and some are my own, heavily inspired by the sound of artists like Nils Frahm and Howling.”

Listen to “Dor” below. Stream on more platforms here.